


Light Outside

by Mazarin221b



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Crying, First Times, Grief, Happy Ending, Healing, M/M, New York Sense does not exist here, Post-Side Story: Garden of Light, post episode 24
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 19:41:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazarin221b/pseuds/Mazarin221b
Summary: Post Garden of Light. Once Akira leaves NYC, Sing and Eiji take a trip up to Maine to come to terms both with Ash and with each other. Eight years is a long time to wait for someone - for both of them.He finishes and beckons Sing closer so he can stuff his camera back in its protective case and into his bag. Sing jostles with both gear bag and camera bag and keeping his balance on the ledge they’re on; he’s about to lose his footing when Eiji reaches out and pulls him in by the elbow, camera slung over his arm and swinging free. Sing throws a hand out and holds Eiji by the shoulder and scoops up the camera and lets momentum carry him forward into Eiji and both of them into the wall of the ledge with a thump.Sing can feel Eiji’s breath on his face, his chest against Eiji’s chest, the clutter of bags weighing on his shoulders. Eiji looks soft and surprised in the low light, his hair whipped out of his ponytail and floating free around his face. Sing reaches up and tucks a strand behind Eiji’s ear, and if he lets his fingers linger a bit down the curve of Eiji’s jaw, he’s not going to apologize for it.





	Light Outside

**Author's Note:**

> DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU'VE NOT READ PAST THE END OF THE MANGA OR SEEN THE LAST EPISODE OF BF.  
> If you've read this and if you've read the side story "Garden of Light," Please, do go right ahead. :) We are currently pretending that New York Sense doesn't exist in this universe right now, there's closure, and then there's _closure_ , you know? 
> 
> Unbeta'd, just exorcising some demons of my own. Please enjoy! Comments and kudos are more than welcome!

Sing twists the cap off of another beer and settles on the sofa. “Akira just sent me a text; she’s landed in Portland,” he says, and tucks his long legs up along the back cushion and nudges his up under Eiji’s hip. Eiji scoots over a little and makes room for him, settling with legs crossed at the ankles and resting on Sing’s thighs. They sit like this often, and Sing glances up at Eiji picking at the label of his beer, peeling the paper off in long, thin strips. He wonders if Eiji ever notices the intimacy of their usual arrangement, or if he chooses to ignore it. Or if…

Sing takes a long sip of his beer, contemplating, the apartment still and silent as it ever is in New York, the hum of traffic and the wailing of a fire truck just perceptible through the third floor windows. “You know,” he starts, then pauses. “You know, I told Aki that your relationship with Ash wasn’t sexual. Was I wrong?”  Sing’s heart thumps in his chest, strangely hollow and slow.

Eiji looks down at the tiny pile of paper strips in his lap. “It’s taken you seven years to ask that question. I suppose you deserve an answer by now.” He looks up and catches Sing’s eyes, his gaze as open and unguarded as Sing’s ever seen it. “Yes. Once.”

Sing sucks in a breath and hopes his face doesn't betray how the bald truth of that statement hits him right in the gut, twists him up inside and leaves him feeling sick. He asked, and Eiji answered, and Sing knows he doesn’t have any right whatsoever to feel this shitty about it.

Eiji doesn’t seem to notice, simply swings his legs off of the sofa, breaking contact with Sing and leaving the spot where his body rested cold. “We did, once. It was the stupidest thing we could have done for each other. Also the only thing.” Eiji blinks and Sing is regretting opening his fucking stupid mouth more and more each second. “God, he was amazing. Like lightning in a summer storm. Hot, intense, and relentless.” Eiji passes a hand over his face. “But you don’t need the details, I’m sure.”

“I’m sorry,” Sing says, because what else can he say? Sorry your lover is dead, sorry you weren’t given a chance at forever. Sorry that Eiji still lives with the pain and the guilt and the memories all these years later, his happiness reduced to a handful of pictures and an aging hard drive.

Eiji shakes his head and picks up his beer again, takes a deep swallow. “I’m thinking of going up to Maine next week. I’ve been commissioned for a shoot up there and the weather looks like it will be perfect for it. Would you like to come with me?”

Sing grasps this change of topic like a lifeline. “Who else is going?”

Eiji looks at him carefully. “Claire and Austin have some projects they’re taking care of that week. It would just be us.”

Sing drains his bottle to hide his momentary uncertainty. He’s got classes, and work, and he’s watching as the ice that’s encased Eiji’s heart for the better part of eight years slowly, finally, begins to thaw. “Okay,” he says, and ignores the tension growing as Eiji stares at him, the silence more and more oppressive the longer Sing waits. Eiji’s lips are shiny with beer, his eyes dark behind his glasses, and Sing needs to retreat before he does something unfathomably stupid. He puts his bottle on the table and stands.

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” he says, and tries to stretch the tension out of his body with a full-body yawn. “‘Night. Let me know what days for next week and I’ll clear it with the boss.”

“Sing,” Eiji starts, and reaches out to catch Sing by the wrist. Sing pauses, Eiji’s fingers wrapped around his skin a flare of heat in the cool of the room. The look in Eiji’s eyes sparks desire that could burn them both to the ground.

Not yet. It’s not time. Eiji’s reawakening, his memories of Ash swimming right to the surface, the revelations of tonight; it’s all too soon. Sing gently disengages and lifts Eiji’s hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles softly.  “Good night, Eiji,” he whispers, and leaves the room before he changes his mind, kicking himself all the way to the shower and through a disappointing session with his own hand.

……………………………………………………………………...

The waves whip grey and frothy against the rocky shore, and Sing is already sick of the fog condensing on his skin and running down the back of his neck.

“I thought you said the weather was going to be perfect,” he complains, and shifts Eiji’s gear bag on his back, scrambles down over a rocky ledge where Eiji has perched himself facing the ocean and the barely-perceptible sun. “This is shit.”

Eiji watches him with laughing eyes before he raises the camera right at Sing, who can’t take it and flips him the bird right in the lens. He’s still decent at climbing but Eiji likes to wedge himself in the most obnoxiously tiny places, places that Sing can barely fit himself into so he can help with filters and reflectors and whatever else equipment Eiji needs.

“I’ll finish this in five minutes and we’ll go back and clean up. It’ll be too dark here in a minute, anyway.” Eiji tips his head back and leans against the rocks, one foot behind him to brace himself. He’s got the faint, diffused sunset cascading across his face, casting shadows on shadows and he looks so breathtakingly beautiful Sing pulls out his phone and snaps a picture before he can even stop to think about it. Eiji doesn’t notice; he’s in working mode and wouldn’t hear a bomb go off once he starts concentrating on angle and light and framing.

He finishes and beckons Sing closer so he can stuff his camera back in its protective case and into his bag. Sing jostles with both gear bag and camera bag and keeping his balance on the ledge they’re on; he’s about to lose his footing when Eiji reaches out and pulls him in by the elbow, camera slung over his arm and swinging free. Sing throws a hand out and holds Eiji by the shoulder and scoops up the camera and lets momentum carry him forward into Eiji and both of them into the wall of the ledge with a thump.

Sing can feel Eiji’s breath on his face, his chest against Eiji’s chest, the clutter of bags weighing on his shoulders. Eiji looks soft and surprised in the low light, his hair whipped out of his ponytail and floating free around his face. Sing reaches up and tucks a strand behind Eiji’s ear, and if he lets his fingers linger a bit down the curve of Eiji’s jaw, he’s not going to apologize for it.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………..

Dinner is a quiet affair at a pizza restaurant in the tiny little town they’re staying in, TV in the bar blaring loudly about baseball and infiltrating the entire restaurant with nattring noise. Sing shoves another crust in the congealing nacho cheese they’d gotten with their breadsticks and Eiji wrinkles his nose.

“That crap tastes like plastic,” he says. “I don’t know why you always eat it.”

Sing grins and takes a bite. “Dunno. Raised on it, I guess. Sometimes that’s all we had, pretzel from the bodega with some of this, made it taste reasonable.”

Eiji smiles back and shakes his head. “I forget sometimes, honestly. Your house out on the Island is so beautiful. You’ve done so well for yourself, Sing. Harvard isn’t going to know what hit them when you show up.”

Sing snorts a laugh, but it hits him all at once: he’s only got a semester left of undergrad and his application to Harvard’s famous business school was sent a few weeks ago. If he gets in, he’ll be moving to Boston for two years. Two years away from New York, away from his businesses, away from Eiji. He swallows the last piece of crust and washes it down to hide the sudden jagged edge of fear that’s opened up inside.

Two years without Eiji. And two years of Eiji without him.  After eight years of blood and tears and sorrow so raw it could destroy them. Moments of profound joy scattered in the ashes like stars. These last weeks of healing, the warmth spreading over them like a blessing.

Sing watches Eiji fussing with the bill and he knows, then, that the time for them is now.

…………………………………………………………….

Eiji is still in the shower and Sing is pacing their room in three strides or less. He’d snuck out across the street and begged a bottle of wine from the little bistro there, snatched two glasses with light fingers that still haven’t lost their touch, and now they’re sitting on the tiny round table under the bay window of the enormous Colonial house-turned-inn, lights down to one ridiculous fringed lamp in the corner.

Sing feels like he could throw up. He’s nineteen again and watching Eiji jump out of a public pool they’d broken into in Queens late one hot summer night, a night when Eiji’s filled out frame, finally healthy again after months of grief-stricken starvation and healing, had launched himself out of the water and onto the side. Sing had watched water on this chest glistening in the orange glow of the streetlights, and had realized, then, what he’d wanted and what he never thought he’d have. 

_ I’m going to take him back from you, Ash. _

No, not take him back from Ash. This isn’t a give and take. Ash will always be there but so will Sing, and Eiji told him, told him two weeks ago on the Cape: No one can take your place, Sing. That Sing isn’t a substitute for Ash, but possibly, maybe, likely? Loved in his own right.

The door opens and Eiji emerges, a pair of pajama pants slung low on his hips and rubbing his hair with a towel. His glasses are somewhere abandoned in the bathroom, and he looks younger, softer, the sunburst scar on his belly barely jarring Sing anymore as it first had.

“What?” Eiji says, eyebrows raised, and Sing realizes he’s staring once again.

“I, ah. I got some wine for us,” he says, and gestures toward the table. “I thought maybe we could have a drink before bed. It was a long day. And a long day before that, just getting up here.”

Eiji’s mouth tilts in a quizzical smile and Sing pours a glass for him and hands it over. Eiji perches on the end of his bed and crosses his legs up under him, and Sing has a panicked moment of indecision before he sits on his own bed, directly across from Eiji. Sing raises his glass.

“I’m glad to be here with you, Eiji,” Sing starts, his fingers tingling. “I feel like we should toast to something, but I don’t know what.”

“To absent friends,” Eiji says quietly, and touches his glass to Sing’s before drinking deep. Sing drinks too, and he can feel his brow crease. He knew that Ash was going to haunt him tonight. He can’t let go. He won’t let go. And Sing—

“And to you, Sing,” Eiji continues, and Sing opens his eyes to see Eiji watching him carefully. “To the one person in my life I can’t do without. To my saving grace. My rock. My best friend. I…” Eiji’s eyes sparkle as tears well up, overflowing his cheeks. Sing holds his breath and reaches out a hand to brush them away with a thumb. Eiji puts down his glass and wraps his fingers around Sing’s hand, leans into it until Sing has to open his palm and Eiji can nestle his cheek there. His skin is soft and warm, and damp with tears, and Sing still can’t breathe.

“I think I realized that I’m in love with you,” Eiji says, sniffling. “I realized it when I was looking at Ash’s pictures, and I felt so sad, and I missed him so much, but all I could think was how much I needed you, and wanted to talk to you about him, and talk about the old days together. That I was trying to love a ghost instead of accepting my love for the man I know, the one who is right here, right in front of me every day. I’ve been so hard on you, Sing. I don’t know how to say I’m sorry.”

Sing puts down his own glass and slides off the bed and onto his knees before Eiji, wraps his arms around Eijs slim frame and buries his face in Eiji’s chest. He’s warm and soft and his skin smells like cedarwood, and Sing sinks into the feel of Eiji’s hands passing through his hair.

“I love you too,” he says, his words muffled by Eiji’s skin. “I knew it years ago, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Ash was always with you. I couldn’t say anything until I knew you’d let him go. But God, Eiji, how I love you. Please let me love you.”

Eiji fits his hands under Sing’s chin and lifts his face until they can see each other’s tears. Sing leans forward and Eiji meets him halfway, and the first touch of their lips is gentle, an affirmation of a connection long denied. Sing drowns in it, feels heat suffuse his body and warm him to the tips of his fingers. His hand fists uselessly against Eiji’s skin, desperate to find something to clutch onto until Eiji grasps Sing’s hand in his and intertwines their fingers. His grip is hard, as desperate as Sing’s, and Sing leans into their kiss until he can no longer catch his breath.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, and brushes Eiji’s hair from his shoulders. “I’ve wanted you for such a long time.”

“I know.” Eiji skims his fingers down Sing’s cheek, his jaw, until he curls a hand around Sing’s neck. “And it’s absolutely ridiculous how long I’ve wanted you, too.”

“Don’t ever tell me, or I might kick myself for never saying anything until now.”

Eiji laughs through his tears. “It would have been a disaster any time before now. I had to cope with my own demons first, and I wasn’t going to use you for my own comfort. I needed to be ready, and now I am.”

Sing sucks in a breath and stands up. At this angle, and his height, Eiji looks small, sitting folded up on the bed like that, but Sing knows his strength. He leans down and tilts Eiji’s face up for another kiss. “Then be with me, Eiji Okamura. I’ll burn down the world for you.”

Eiji kneels up so they’re eye to eye. He grips Sing’s face and Sing stills at the intensity in his gaze. “I don’t need that,” he says, voice low. “I just need you to live in it with me.”

……………………………………………………………………

It’s fully past midnight when Eiji finally slips Sing’s tshirt over his head, Sing’s lips swollen and dry from hours of kissing, his cock aching with the need of almost a decade ready to be fulfilled. He gasps as Eiji presses kisses to his chest, fingers twisted in the sheets and determined more than ever to let Eiji go at his own pace, whatever that is.

Glacial, it seems. But that’s okay. More to savor this way.

“I’ve not done this in a very long time,” Eiji whispers. “I’m sorry.” He tucks his fingertips into the waistband of Sing’s jeans and Sing tips his hips up, ready to shuck them at Eiji’s request.

“Stop apologizing. We have the rest of forever for this. We don’t need to do anything more than we are right now.”

“Hmm. But I want to.” Eiji fingers at the button on Sing’s jeans. “What about these?”

Oh hell yes. Sing flips the fly open and shimmies out of his jeans with a speed that leaves Eiji laughing, sitting on his heels on the narrow bed and watching him with liquid eyes. Sing smirks then slowly, carefully, tugs the edge of his briefs down below his hip bone.

“And these?” he says. “Like what you see?”

Eiji bites his lip. He looks ravenous, and he reaches out a shaking hand to carefully cup Sing’s cock, hard under the confining cotton. Sing throws his head back in pleasure. “Fuck, Eiji, god that feels good.”

“I want to see it,” Eiji says, giving Sing’s cock a careful squeeze. “I’ve never seen you naked, not in all these years.”

Sing’s heart stops in his chest. He knows he’s got nothing to be ashamed of, but really. Getting naked for Eiji Okumura at his request has to be on the top ten list of best experiences of his life and he doesn’t want to screw it up by being awkward. So he hooks both thumbs under the waistband of his underwear and pulls them off carefully, slowly, until he can kick them off of his feet and onto the floor. He then lies back on the bed and closes his eyes, ready for Eiji’s scrutiny.

Nothing happens.

Sing fights his flush of self-consciousness and cracks open his eyes to see Eiji’s hand hovering over his skin, not touching, just there, Eiji’s eyes wide and wondering.

“I don’t know where to start,” he says, voice trembling.

Sing sits up until he can grasp Eiji’s hand and places it over his own hammering heart. “Here, Eiji. Start here.”

Eiji’s fingers curl slightly against Sing’s skin and he breaks, surges forward and knocks Sing back against the pillows. He wraps one hand around Sing’s neck and the other around Sing’s cock as he kisses him, rough and frantic, and Sing is so shocked he can only moan against Eiji’s mouth, helpless. He grapples with Eiji’s pajamas, siding his hands under the waist and grabbing Eiji’s ass with both hands to drag him closer, to get Eiji as close as he can without devouring him whole. Eiji lets go of his cock, braces himself over Sing’s body, and looks down at him with wild eyes.

“I want everything,” he growls, and starts kissing his way down Sing’s chest. Sing gasps and swears, and as Eiji looks up his body to give him a wicked grin, Sing realizes he’s in for more than he expected. Eiji has always presented as shy and soft, quiet and sexless, for most of their lives together. But as he grasps Sing’s cock in his hand and licks a long stripe up the shaft, Sing can feel his eyes roll back and his bones melt.

“You don’t have to, I mean, Eiji—” he splutters, trying to keep his mind in one piece as Eiji sucks down as far as he can and wraps his hand around everything he can’t reach with his mouth, stroking Sing’s cock in time with long, luxurious pulls of his mouth.

Sing can feel his orgasm creeping up on him, too worked up to last and determined to give Eiji as much as he’s getting as soon as he can. He gently pushes his hands through Eiji’s long hair and holds his head carefully as he bobs, sloppy and unpracticed but determined and enthusiastic and at least somewhat experienced in the way his tongue presses, insistent, under the head until Sing sucks in a breath and comes, shuddering, across Eiji’s hungry lips.

“Jesus,” is all he can find, and “Come up here, you,” as he drags Eiji up his body and shoves his hand in Eiji’s pajama bottoms and drags them down over his hips. “Yeah?” he asks, as his hand seeks out and finds Eiji's cock, hard and thick, in the space between them and begins to stroke.

“Fuck, yes,” Eiji moans, and Sing’s fairly sure that’s only the second time in their lives he’s heard that word come out of Eiji’s mouth. He twists his hand around Eiji’s cock a few times before he begins a good rhythm that has Eiji panting and rutting into his hand in a matter of minutes. Sing whispers to him all the things he’s wanted to say all these years about his beauty, his genius, his talent; everything he wanted to convey about his kindness and strength in the worship of his hands on Eiji’s body. His lips linger at the corner of Eiji’s mouth, kissing and licking the taste of his own come from Eiji’s skin until Eiji comes apart with a shout that begins with the first syllables of Sing’s own name.

Afterward, things are quiet. Sing waits, and he wonders, as Eiji lies nestled against his chest.

It only takes a few moments for the tears to come, a torrent of grief that Sing knew was coming, a last outpouring of loss, and Sing cries along with him, their tears in each other’s mouths, on each other’s skin, lost in the dark of their own shared love.

………………………………………………….

Morning comes, as it will, and Sing wakes first. Eiji has turned over, his back to Sing on the narrow bed, and Sing places a hand on the hollow between his shoulder blades. Eiji is there, and undeniably real, and as he stirs, turns over and sees Sing his blinding, brilliant smile without a trace of regret as he falls into Sing's embrace is all Sing could ever want.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Title from Wakey!Wakey! - Light Outside.


End file.
